⚠️ Moved — this repository is no longer maintained

Work on the Surface Pro 12in continued and is now consolidated in a single repository:

👉 https://github.com/franzelverbier/surface-pro-12-linux

Everything here is superseded by it, and a great deal has been learned since this snapshot (2026-07-14). Notably, all of the following now work and are documented there:

• EL2 + KVM, with the tcblaunch.exe version pitfall spelled out — the single factor that decides whether Secure Launch works at all
• Internal Wi-Fi at EL2 — the cause was a PCIe SMMUv3 left at status = "reserved" in the device tree, plus the false-negative test that hid it for days
• Audio at EL2 — DSPs started before ExitBootServices, then attached by the kernel instead of started
• Boot brought from 30 s to 9 s, with each remaining console warning identified
• the annotated EL1→EL2 device-tree diff, and the systemd units carrying the workarounds

Please open issues and follow the work there. Thanks for reading.

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Surface Pro 12" (Snapdragon X Plus) — Linux

Running Arch Linux ARM on the Microsoft Surface Pro 12" (1st Ed, Snapdragon) — SoC Snapdragon X Plus 8-core, x1p42100, ARM64 — a device with no upstream kernel support at the time this work began.

This builds directly on Harrison Vanderbyl's surface-pro-12-inch-linux (device tree + firmware groundwork). None of this exists without that work — thank you.

Status snapshot: 2026-07-14. The device runs as an internal dual-boot (Windows + Arch Linux ARM) with working internal display, KDE Plasma, GPU acceleration, hardware video codec, audio, and Wi-Fi.

Status

Component	State	Notes
Boot	✅	Custom linux-next kernel, GRUB (arm64-efi), internal dual-boot
Internal display (eDP)	✅	KDE Plasma / Wayland. Non-fatal panel-edp probe warning remains
GPU 3D accel	✅	Adreno X1-45 — OpenGL 4.6 (freedreno) + Vulkan 1.4 (turnip), Mesa 26.1
HW video codec	✅	Decode + encode via V4L2 after supplying one firmware blob (see Fixes)
Audio	✅	Card + ADSP up, headset jack detected; topology now in linux-firmware
Wi-Fi	✅	ath12k / WCN7850 (FastConnect 7800), wpa_supplicant
Battery	✅	Gauge works via energy_* / UPower (percentage + health). charge_*/capacity return ENODATA — known upstream regression, no desktop impact
Suspend / resume	❌	Snapdragon does not resume — sleep targets masked (see Stability)
Surface HID (cover / sensors)	⚠️	unexpected descriptor length warnings

Hardware IDs

• SoC: Snapdragon X Plus 8-core, x1p42100, ARM64
• GPU: Adreno X1-45 (freedreno / turnip)
• Wi-Fi/BT: Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 / WCN7850 (PCI subsystem 00ab:1414)
• Audio: X1P42100-Microsoft-Surface-Pro-12in (AudioReach / q6apm)
• Internal storage: KIOXIA UFS ~477 GB (shared with Windows)

Kernel

• linux-next, reference build 7.1.0-next-20260626, compiled with x1p42100 support absent from stable kernels: CLK_X1P42100_GPUCC/CAMCC/VIDEOCC, CLK_X1E80100_GCC/DISPCC, PINCTRL_X1E80100 built in; DRM_MSM, ATH12K as modules.
• DTB from Harrison Vanderbyl's repo (SP12 board not yet upstream), loaded by GRUB (devicetree).
• Heads-up: mainline Linux 7.2 integrates the SP12 DTS — once it lands, the custom DTB and home-compiled kernel should become unnecessary.

Install approach

Linux root lives on an internal ext4 partition alongside Windows. GRUB (arm64-efi, standalone BOOTAA64.EFI on the ESP) loads /boot/Image + initramfs + DTB. Earlier iterations booted from USB (SanDisk key, then Ventoy vdisk, then USB SSD) before moving to the internal disk for reliability — see CHANGELOG.md.

Fixes / how-tos

Hardware video codec firmware (qcom-iris)

The iris video codec requires qcvss8380_pa.mbn, which is not shipped in linux-firmware. Without it, dmesg spams Direct firmware load ... failed with error -2 and the codec never initializes.

Extract it from the Windows driver store (dual-boot users have it locally):

Windows/System32/DriverStore/FileRepository/qcdx8380.inf_arm64_*/qcvss8380_pa.mbn

Copy it to:

/lib/firmware/qcom/x1p42100/Microsoft/Surface12/qcvss8380_pa.mbn

If several driver versions are present, pick the one whose qcdxkmbase8380.bin matches (md5) the graphics firmware already installed on the Linux side, to keep the DX firmware set consistent.

• Do NOT blacklist qcom_iris — blacklisting freezes boot via sync_state. Supplying the firmware is the correct fix.
• After reboot you get /dev/video0 (decoder) + /dev/video1 (encoder). Use them via V4L2 mem2mem: mpv --hwdec=v4l2m2m, ffmpeg -hwaccel v4l2m2m.
• Note: VA-API is not the Adreno path. The vaInitialize failed warning in Electron/Chromium apps is harmless — video accel goes through V4L2.

Audio

The AudioReach topology X1P42100-Microsoft-Surface-Pro-12in-tplg.bin now ships in linux-firmware under qcom/x1e80100/. The ADSP firmware qcadsp8380.mbn lives under qcom/x1p42100/Microsoft/Surface12/. With both present, the card comes up (q6apm), the headset jack is detected, and PipeWire routes normally.

Known issues / TODO

• Battery charge_* sysfs return ENODATA and no capacity file — a known regression in recent qcom-x1e kernels. No desktop impact: UPower derives percentage and health from energy_* (which report correctly). cycle_count, voltage_max_design and the manufacture date are firmware placeholders. Charge-limit control and state_of_health are landing upstream.
• panel-edp probe warning (drivers/gpu/drm/panel/panel-edp.c) — non-fatal; display works.
• Surface HID descriptor warnings — cover / sensors.
• No suspend/resume — masked (see below).

Stability notes

• No resume from suspend on Snapdragon → mask sleep/suspend/hibernate/hybrid-sleep targets and set logind IdleAction=ignore, HandleLidSwitch=ignore.
• Fragile USB controller under heavy load: avoid sustained I/O between two USB SSDs simultaneously (locks the bus); usbcore.autosuspend=-1 keeps USB storage from dropping (-EIO / ext4 corruption).
• Updating with pacman -Syu: hold linux-aarch64, systemd, mesa, vulkan-freedreno (plus mkinitcpio, linux-firmware*) in IgnorePkg, and add --ignore vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers at upgrade time, so the whole Mesa/Vulkan userspace stays on one version — a partial upgrade that bumps only part of the stack can destabilise the Adreno/turnip GPU. The custom /boot/Image + DTB are not package-managed, so they survive upgrades untouched.
• Auto-mounting a shared NTFS partition (dual-boot data): add it to /etc/fstab with nofail,x-systemd.automount through ntfs-3g (the custom kernel has no in-tree ntfs3), so a dirty/hibernated volume can never block or delay boot.

Credits

• Harrison Vanderbyl — surface-pro-12-inch-linux: the device tree + firmware groundwork this is built on.
• Arch Linux ARM · linux-next · Mesa (freedreno / turnip) · the aarch64-laptops community.

License

GPL-2.0 — see LICENSE. The kernel .config and device tree derive from the Linux kernel (GPL-2.0); the helper scripts and documentation are released under the same license for consistency.